SEPANG, Malaysia — As military aircraft and a flotilla of ships from a half-dozen nations combed the waters south of Vietnam on Sunday for signs of a jet with 239 people onboard that vanished a day earlier, the authorities here deflected troubling questions about two passengers on the flight who had used passports listed in an international database as lost or stolen.

The secretary general of Interpol, Ronald K. Noble, said on Sunday that no checks had been conducted by the authorities in Malaysia or any other country about the two passports before the plane, a Boeing 777-200, left on flight MH370, which disappeared Saturday en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

In a forceful statement, Mr. Noble warned that “only a handful of countries” around the world routinely made such checks.

Security and aviation experts continued to offer starkly disparate theories on Sunday about why flight MH370 disappeared, a measure both of how little is known about its fate and of how little information the Malaysian authorities are revealing. In a series of briefings, Malaysian officials have refused to answer any questions relating to what they described as “security matters.”

The overnight flight left Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing early Saturday and disappeared from radar about one hour after takeoff. No distress signal was sent, officials have said.

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, said samples from an oil slick discovered Saturday were being tested. “We are doing the verification of whether the oil comes from the aircraft or not,” he said.

Vietnamese news media reported that a yellow object that rescuers had believed might be part of the aircraft turned out to be a coral reef.

The plane was flying in apparently calm weather, and speculation on the reasons for its disappearance ranged from a rare, catastrophic mechanical failure to something more sinister.

More details emerged on Sunday about the two passengers who used the fraudulently obtained passports. Both men bought one-way tickets issued last week at the same travel agency in a shopping mall in the Thailand beach resort of Pattaya, according to electronic booking records. A woman who answered the phone at the travel agency said she was “too busy to talk.”

It is unclear how the men traveled south to Malaysia to board the flight on Saturday. In Beijing, each man was to continue on to separate European cities, according to the electronic records. As transit passengers, they would not have been required to obtain Chinese visas.

Security experts in Asia said the use of false travel documents is a persistent problem in the region, but differed on the significance of the two stolen passports to the investigation.

Xu Ke, a lecturer at the Zhejiang Police College in eastern China who studies aviation safety and hijackings and has advised the Chinese authorities, said the two men might have been illegal migrants.

“There are many cases of falsified and counterfeit passports and visas for illegal migration that our public security comes across, even several cases every day,” he said.

But Steve Vickers, the chief executive of a Hong Kong-based security consulting company that specializes in risk mitigation and corporate intelligence in Asia, said the presence of at least two travelers with stolen passports aboard a single jet was rare and a potential clue.

“It is fairly unusual to have more than one person flying on a flight with a stolen passport,” said Mr. Vickers, who publicly warned a month ago that stolen airport passes and other identity documents in Asia merited a crackdown. “The future of this investigation lies in who really checked in and what they looked like,” he added.

Mr. Azharuddin, the Malaysian civil aviation chief, said investigators were reviewing video footage of the passengers. “There are only two passengers on record that flew on this aircraft that had false passports,” he said. “And we have the CCTV recordings of those passengers from check-in bags to the departure point.” He would not provide details about what investigators saw in the footage.

Mr. Noble, the Interpol secretary general, said it was too soon to speculate about any connection between the stolen passports and the missing plane.

But, he added, “It is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol’s databases.”

Malaysian officials stressed that their priority was locating the aircraft. They said they had reviewed military radar records and raised the possibility that the aircraft had tried to turn back just before it lost contact with ground controllers on Saturday.

Rodzali Daud, the head of the Royal Malaysian Air Force, said that authorities were “baffled” by the lack of any distress signals from the aircraft but that a closer look at military radar might have indicated a deviation from the flight path.

“We looked into some of the recording on the radar that we have,” he said. “There is a possibility that there was a turn back.”

Mikael Robertsson, the co-founder and co-chairman of Flightradar24, the Stockholm-based service that tracks the majority of the world’s passenger jets, said data gathered by separate, civilian receivers in the region did not appear to show the jet turning around.

“I’m not saying it didn’t turn back, but we can’t see that,” he said.

Mr. Robertsson said a turn made by the aircraft just before it vanished from radar screens was consistent with its flight path.

Aircraft and boats from China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam searched the area where Malaysian ground controllers lost contact with the plane: the maritime border between Malaysia and Vietnam.

MOSCOW — Amid new reports of Russian reinforcements in Crimea, one of the region’s leaders on Sunday recommended that Ukrainian troops remaining there should “quietly and peacefully” leave the territory unless they were willing to renounce their loyalty to Kiev and serve the region’s new administration.

The remarks by Vladimir Konstantinov, a pro-Russian figure who was in Moscow on Sunday, suggested an attempt to clear roughly 3,500 Ukrainian forces from the territory after a tense, weeklong standoff. Another official, speaking to reporters in Simferopol, the regional capital of Crimea, announced plans to build railway bridges connecting Crimea with mainland Russia, bypassing Ukraine.

Russia, meanwhile, made clear that it planned to move forward with some form of recognition after Crimea’s referendum vote March 16 on the regional assembly’s move to secede from Ukraine.

In a conversation with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia made a forceful case for the legitimacy of Crimea’s referendum, telling them, “The steps taken by the legitimate leadership of Crimea are based on the norms of international law and aim to ensure the legal interests of the population of the peninsula,” according to a statement from the Kremlin on Sunday.

“Vladimir Putin also drew the attention of his interlocutors to the absence of any effort by the authorities in Kiev to limit the riot of ultranationalist and radical forces in the capital and many other regions,” the statement said. Though the leaders had different readings of the situation, it said, “There was an expression of interest in de-escalating the tension and soonest possible normalization of conditions.”

Pavel Dorokhin, deputy chairman of the State Duma’s committee on industry, said Russia had set aside 40 billion rubles, or about $1.1 billion, to rebuild Crimea’s industrial infrastructure. After the referendum, he said, Crimea may take on one of three statuses within Russia – that of a region, a territory or an autonomous republic.

“We are ready to back any of these options, with regard for the people’s opinion,” Mr. Dorokhin said, during a visit to Simferopol on Sunday, according to Interfax. Another deputy, Vladimir Bessonov, said the Duma would amend a law in the coming week to facilitate Crimea’s accession to Russia. He said it would be a “lawful process.”

“No one from abroad can tell us how to live,” he said.

On Saturday, a Ukrainian border plane was fired on near the boundary between Crimea and Russia, according to Ukrainian authorities, and witnesses reported seeing around 200 military vehicles unloaded from amphibious ships sent from Russia.

“If you don’t want to owe allegiance to the new administration, we will do everything to ensure that you quietly and peacefully leave the territory — no problem,” said Mr. Konstantinov, the chairman of Crimea’s legislature, in remarks carried by the Interfax news service. “The people are in a difficult situation; they have taken oaths. However, it is a big question who they owed allegiance to.”

He said those who stayed will become part of “new armed forces, with new regulations and new conditions of labor renumerations, years in grade and pension.” Interfax reported on Saturday that the separatist government swore in armed units that they described as “the Armed Forces of the Republic of Crimea.”

Over the weekend there were signs of a modest willingness on the part of Russia and Ukraine to seek a diplomatic resolution to the widening crisis. On Sunday, a spokesman for the European Union said she hoped for a thorough investigation into the identity of snipers who shot demonstrators in Kiev.

In Moscow, an unidentified military official told Russian news agencies that Russia was considering suspending inspections of its strategic nuclear arsenal required by arms-reduction treaties, as well as other military cooperation accords meant to build confidence and avoid confrontations.

The official said the move was justified by “baseless threats” against Russia by the United States and NATO. A suspension of the inspections would undermine a pillar of international security and expand the confrontation beyond Ukraine.

Although President Obama has made it clear that the United States does not want to escalate the Crimean crisis, the Pentagon has stepped up training operations in Poland and sent fighter jets to patrol the skies over Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, three former Soviet republics with sizable populations of ethnic Russians.

Over the weekend, Mr. Obama had phone consultations about Ukraine with the French president and the British and Italian prime ministers, then had a conference call with the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which are NATO members.

He pledged that the United States, as a NATO ally, had an “unwavering commitment” to their defense, according to the White House’s account of the call.

In a separate phone conversation on Saturday, Secretary of State John Kerry warned the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, that “continued military escalation and provocation in Crimea or elsewhere in Ukraine, along with steps to annex Crimea to Russia, would close any available space for diplomacy,” a State Department official said.

In Kiev, Ukraine’s new foreign minister, Andrii Deshchytsa, said some small progress had been made to form a “contact group” of foreign diplomats to mediate the country’s confrontation with Russia after the occupation of Crimea by Russian soldiers and local “self-defense” groups more than a week ago. Washington has sought to establish the contact group — which would include Russia, Ukraine, Britain, France and the United States — as a way to bring Moscow and Kiev to the negotiating table.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) -- The mysteries surrounding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and the true identities of some of its passengers, are as deep as thesoutheast Asian waters where multinational search teams are searching for the jet.

Navies from two of Malaysia's neighbors were pursuing new leads as Sunday turned into Monday in southeast Asia.

Vietnam's navy has spotted a floating object about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Vietnam's Tho Chu Island, which is located off the country's southwest coast in the Gulf of Thailand, Vietnam National Search and Rescue Committee Spokesman Hung Nguyen told CNN. The object was spotted by a Vietnamese navy rescue aircraft at about 7:30 a.m. ET Sunday (6:30 p.m. local time). Due to the dark, the navy aircraft could not get close enough to identify the floating object, and was recalled to base. Three search and rescue boats have since been deployed to that location.

Meanwhile, Thailand's navy is shifting its focus in the search away from the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, Thai Navy Rear Adm. Karn Dee-ubon told CNN on Sunday. The shift came at the request of the Malaysians, who are looking into possibilities the plane turned around and could have gone down in the Andaman Sea, near Thailand's border, Karn said.

The Andaman Sea lies to the west of a narrow strip of Thailand that ends in the Malaysian peninsula, while the Gulf of Thailand lies to the east of that Thai isthmus.

Members of Fo Guang Shan rescue team offer a special prayer on Sunday, March 9, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, for passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines flight. Contact with the Boeing 777-200 was lost as it flew over the South China Sea early Saturday after leaving Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew.

A photo taken by personnel on board a Vietnamese search aircraft in an undisclosed area on March 9 shows possible debris from the missing Malaysia Airline jet.

A handout picture provided by the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency shows Malaysian coast guard personnel checking a radar screen during search and rescue operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight on March 9.

Italian tourist Luigi Maraldi, who had reported his passport stolen in August 2013, shows his current passport during a press conference at a police station in Phuket island, Thailand, on March 9. Two passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight were reported traveling on stolen passports belonging to Maraldi and an Austrian citizen who reportedly had his papers stolen two years ago.

Hugh Dunleavy, commercial director of Malaysia Airlines, speaks to journalists on March 9 at a hotel where relatives and friends of passengers aboard the missing airplane are staying in Beijing.

Vietnamese air force crew stand in front of a plane at Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on March 9 before heading out to the area between Vietnam and Malaysia where the airliner vanished early Saturday.

Buddhist monks offer a special prayer for passengers aboard the missing plane at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 9.

The Chinese navy warship Jinggangshan prepares to leave Zhanjiang Port early on March 9 to assist in search and rescue operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The Jinggangshan, an amphibious landing ship, is loaded with lifesaving equipment, underwater detection devices and supplies of oil, water and food.

Members of a Chinese emergency response team board a rescue vessel at the port of Sanya in China's Hainan province on March 9. The vessel is carrying 12 divers and will rendezvous with another rescue vessel on its way to the area where contact was lost Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The rescue vessel sets out from Sanya port in the South China Sea.

A family member of passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane is mobbed by journalists at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Saturday, March 8.

A Vietnamese Air Force plane found traces of oil in waters that authorities suspect to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the Vietnamese government online newspaper reported March 8.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, arrives to meet family members of missing passengers at the reception center at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8.

Malaysia Airlines official Joshua Law Kok Hwa, center, speaks to reporters in Beijing on March 8.

A relative of two passengers on the missing plane reacts at their home in Kuala Lumpur on March 8.

Wang Yue, director of marketing of Malaysia Airlines in China, reads a company statement during a press conference at the Metro Park Lido Hotel in Beijing on March 8.

Chinese police stand beside the arrival board showing delayed Flight MH370 in red at the Beijing airport on March 8.

A woman asks a staff member at the Beijing airport for more information on the missing flight.

A Malaysian man who says he has relatives on board the missing plane talks to journalists at the Beijing airport on March 8.

Passengers walk past a Malaysia Airlines sign on March 8 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia.

Malaysia Airlines Group CEO Ahmad Juahari Yahya, front, speaks during a press conference on March 8 at a hotel in Sepang. "We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts" with the jet, he said.

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

Malaysia airliner loses contact

HIDE CAPTION

<<

<

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

>

>>

Photos: Malaysia airliner loses contact

Could plane have disintegrated?

Stolen passports raise terror concerns

American Philip Wood aboard missing jet

One promising lead has turned out to be a dead end. A "strange object" spotted by a Singaporean search plane late Sunday afternoon is not debris from the missing jetliner, a U.S. official familiar with the issue told CNN on Sunday.

A U.S. reconnaissance plane "thought it saw something like debris but it was a false alarm," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

By the end of the day Sunday, more than 40 planes and more than two dozen ships from several countries were involved in the search. Two reconnaissance aircraft from Australia, and one plane and five sea vessels from Indonesia were the latest additions, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the director general of civil aviation in Malaysia, told reporters Sunday. In addition, the Chinese navy dispatched a frigate and an amphibious landing ship, according to a online post by China's navy. Those ships are expected to arrive on site Monday morning (Sunday night ET).

Those reinforcements join the rescue teams already scouring the South China Sea, near the Gulf of Thailand, for any sign of where the flight, operated by Malaysia's flagship airline, might have gone down, Malaysian authorities said.

The area in focus for most of the search, about 90 miles south of Tho Chu Island, is where a Vietnamese plane reportedly spotted oil slicks that stretched between 6 and 9 miles.

Malaysian authorities have not yet confirmed the report of the oil slicks, which came from Vietnam's official news agency.

Big questions far outweigh the few fragments of information that have emerged about the plane's disappearance.

What happened to the plane? Why was no distress signal issued? Who exactly was aboard?

The flight may have changed course and turned back toward Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian military officials said at a news conference Sunday.

But the pilot appears to have given no signal to authorities that he was turning around, the officials said, attributing the change of course to indications from radar data.

As the search continues, the agonizing wait goes on for relatives of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board the plane. Video from Reuters showed Malaysia Airlines personnel in Beijing, where Flight 370 was headed, helping family members apply for expedited passports so they could fly to Kuala Lumpur early this week.

Among the passengers, there were 154 people from China or Taiwan; 38 Malaysians, and three U.S. citizens. Five of the passengers were younger than 5 years old.

Stolen passports

Interpol said Sunday that at least two passports -- one Austrian and one Italian -- recorded in its Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database were used by passengers on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The passports were added to the database after being stolen in separate incidents over the past two years, Interpol said.

Italy and Austria have said that none of their citizens were on board the plane.

Maraldi told Reuters he was inundated with phone calls, texts and social media inquiries asking if he was alive and well. He soon discovered that he was the subject of stories about the missing plane.

Maraldi is staying on Phuket Island as a tourist, and his passport disappeared in July 2013, Cavaliere said. Maraldi told Reuters he got a new passport after his old one was stolen.

"Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in INTERPOL's databases," said Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble in a statement.

Agonizing wait for families continues

Officials to families: Prepare for worst

The two passengers who used the passports in question appear to have bought their tickets together.

The tickets were bought from China Southern Airlines at identical prices, paid in Thailand's baht currency, according to China's official e-ticket verification system Travelsky. The ticket numbers are contiguous, which indicates the tickets were issued together.

The two tickets booked with China Southern Airlines both start in Kuala Lumpur, flying to Beijing, and then onward to Amsterdam. The Italian passport's ticket continues to Copenhagen, the Austrian's to Frankfurt.

Authorities say they are investigating the identities of some of those on board who appear to have issues with their passports.

"I've seen these reports about the passports. We're looking into that, but we don't have anything to confirm at this point," U.S. deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. "The reports certainly raise questions and concerns, and that's exactly why we're looking into them. But right now, it would be premature to speculate," he said.

Malaysian authorities have been in contact with counterterrorism organizations about possible passport issues, acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Sunday.

He didn't specify how many potential passport issues there were, saying authorities are looking at the whole passenger manifest.

Additionally, no inquiry was made by Malaysia Airlines to determine if any passengers on the flight were traveling on stolen passports, he said. Many airlines do not check the database, he said.

Five passengers ended up not boarding the aircraft. Their bags were removed and were not on board the jet when it disappeared, Hussein said.

A U.S. intelligence official said that no link to terrorism had been discovered so far, but that authorities were still investigating.

Another possible explanation for the use of the stolen passports is illegal immigration.

There are previous cases of illegal immigrants using fake passports trying to get into Western countries. And Southeast Asia is known to be a booming market for stolen passports.

Disappearing during cruise

There is a precedent for a modern jetliner to fall from the sky while "in the cruise" and lie hidden for months, according to CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest.

On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 was en route from Rio De Janeiro to Paris when communications ended suddenly from the Airbus A330, another state-of-the-art aircraft.

It took four searches over the course of nearly two years to locate the bulk of flight 447's wreckage and the majority of the 228 bodies in a mountain range deep under the ocean. It took even longer to find the cause of the disaster.

In May 2011, the aircraft's voice recorder and flight data recorder were recovered from the ocean floor after an extensive search using miniature submersible vehicles.

It was not until July 2012 that investigators published their report, which blamed the crash on a series of errors by the pilots and a failure to react effectively to technical problems.

The missing Malaysia Airlines plane had suffered damage in the past, airline CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said Sunday. The aircraft had a clipped wing tip, but Boeing repaired it, and the jet was safe to fly, Yahya said.

The National Transportation Safety Board announced late Saturday that a team of its investigators was en route to Asia to help with the investigation, the agency said.

If all those on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 are found to have died, it will rank as the deadliest airline disaster since November 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into a New York neighborhood, killing all 260 people on board and five more on the ground.

MOSCOW — Three months after a surprise Kremlin announcement that Russian state news agency RIA Novosti was to be liquidated, changes are under way at the company.As employees were asked to choose whether to stay on at RIA Novosti's replacement agency or sign redundancy contracts, the agency's editor-in-chief Iraklii Gachechiladze said Thursday that staffing procedures for the new company were almost complete and that its final structure could be unveiled next week.Employees up to and including the agency's editor-in-chief were stunned on Dec. 9 by a presidential decree liquidating RIA Novosti, Russia's largest state-run news agency. Under the decree, RIA and state radio Voice of Russia are to be disbanded and their remaining structures merged into a replacement organization named Rossiya Segodnya, which is Russian for "Russia Today." News and commentary website Slon.ru ran a story Wednesday quoting a letter sent to employees of RIA Novosti's regional offices in which the department's head described the situation as "a rather bleak picture."The letter said the number of regional correspondents would be slashed, while those remaining will work from home, the report said.Gachechiladze criticized the report, saying Slon.ru had failed to properly secure RIA Novosti's position on developments."Even respected publications such as Slon.ru are not trying to reach RIA's press service before publishing materials," said Gachechiladze. "All the reforms are taking place with as much transparency as possible, therefore there is no need to rely on different interpretations of the events taking place."Even rank-and-file employees within the company have been left largely in the dark about plans for Rossiya Segodnya and about the specifics of its future editorial policy since the RIA Novosti liquidation news was announced, however.The decision to abolish RIA Novosti was widely interpreted as another in a series of shifts in Russia's news landscape pointing toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector.Independent liberal-leaning television station Dozhd faces the imminent prospect of closure after cable and satellite providers stopped carrying the channel over a contentious poll about World War II.On Wednesday, Izvestia daily newspaper reported that a ruling United Russia party deputy is readying legislation that would, among other things, make it a crime to "allow publication of false anti-Russian information."Starting Wednesday, staff at RIA Novosti's Moscow-based English-language desk was asked to decide whether they wanted to work at Rossiya Segodnya or accept compensation packages. The bulk of the writers and editors for the English-language service have opted for the latter option.The new agency is to be headed by Dmitry Kiselyov, a notoriously outspoken conservative television presenter, and will share its editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, with the Kremlin-funded television news channel RT.RT, which was formerly known as Russia Today, has been at the center of controversy recently with two reporters at the channel "going rogue" to openly criticize Russia's interventions in the southern Ukrainian province of Crimea in the past few days. Criticism of the Kremlin typically gets little to no attention on RT, while content devoted to negative aspects of life in Western countries makes up a substantial part of its broadcasts.Kiselyov's ascendancy appears to point to efforts by the Russian authorities to appeal more to ultra-conservative values, a trend best signaled by last year's passage of a law banning the promotion of homosexual "propaganda" to minors.In Kiselyov's most notorious on-screen harangue, dating back to 2012, he suggested it would be advisable to "burn or bury the hearts of gays" who die in car crashes.

The movement of troops in western Ukraine, reported by the country's media, was held as part of military exercises and is not related to events in the breakaway region of Crimea, the acting defense minister said Sunday.Crimea, the autonomous, largely pro-Russian republic, has been taken over by thousands of troops without insignia widely believed to be the Russian military, though Moscow has denied involvement.Ukrainian media reported over the weekend that eyewitnesses saw armored vehicles and military trucks leaving the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. The further whereabouts of the convoy remain unknown, prompting rumors it was possibly being prepared for deployment in Crimea."No maneuvers, no movements by the armed forces towards Crimea have ever been planned. The troops are carrying out their regular, scheduled duties," Acting Defense Minister Ihor Tenyuh said, UNIAN news agency reported.Tenyuh said the personnel and vehicles traveled to military training grounds as part of large-scale exercises held in order to determine the combat readiness of the troops. The acting president will later submit a detailed report to the prime minister about the efficiency of the armed forces based on the results of these exercises.The report came in the wake of a number of military exercises in Russia's western regions in the past days, including air defense drills, combat readiness snap checks and the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Russia denied the exercises were linked to the events in Crimea.Crimean authorities, who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the central government in Kiev, ruled out any contacts with the present leadership on Sunday. The Crimean parliament announced a decision to become a part of Russia on Thursday, and a referendum on the issue is slated for March 16.

The White House on Sunday warned Russia that it will come under increased international pressure if it presses ahead with a referendum to annex Crimea.

Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken said on CNN that pressure on Russia will only go up if the referendum goes forward on March 16.

“First, if there is an annexation of Crimea, a referendum that moves Crimea from Ukraine to Russia, we won't recognize it, nor will most of the world,” Blinken said.

“Second, the pressure that we've already exerted in coordination with our partners and allies will go up. The president made it very clear in announcing our sanctions, as did the Europeans the other day, that this is the first step and we've put in place a very flexible and very tough mechanism to increase the pressure, to increase the sanctions,” he said.

Crimean offcials say they will go ahead with a vote next Sunday to join the Russian Federation, but international diplomatic efforts are intensifying against the move.

On Sunday German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. Both leaders agreed that Ukraine's territorial integrity needed to be protected at all costs. A statement from the German government said a referendum planned for March 16 on Crimea joining Russia was “extremely dubious” and “illegal."

x

Turks of Crimean Tatar origin waves Crimean flags and hold a banner that reads " Crimea is the homeland of Crimean Tatars " as they demonstrate to protest against Russia's military intervention in Crimea, Ukraine, in Ankara, Turkey, Sunday, March 2, 2014.

​The Reuters news agency reported that Merkel and Erdogan said efforts to form an “international contact group” and a committee to investigate violent incidents of recent weeks were important.

According to Reuters, Erdogan said Turkey was prepared to help the international contact group given his country's close relationships with Ukraine and Russia, as well as its special relationship and contact with the Crimean Tatars.

Also on Sunday Russian President Vladimr Putin Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron and said the steps taken by authorities in Ukraine's Crimea region were in accordance with international law.

Obama to meet with Ukrainian prime minister

President Obama will meet with Ukrainian Interim Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk at the White House on Wednesday to discuss a efforts to resolve the crisis.

Obama said last week that any referendum on Crimea would violate international law and the Ukrainian constitution. He also announced sanctions including travel bans and the freezing of assets of individuals responsible for Russia's military intervention in Crimea. Russian President Vladimir Putin was not among the individuals.

Ukraine says it will not provoke Russia

Ukraine's acting defense minister says Kyiv has no plans to send armed forces to Crimea. The Interfax news agency quoted Acting Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh as saying on Sunday that Ukrainian troops are perfoming training exercises, but they are are strictly limited involving only troop movements from one base to another.

“No movements, no departures for Crimea by the armed forces are foreseen. They are doing their routine work which the armed have always had,” he said. Tenyukh was responding to media reports about Ukrainian troop movements after Russian forces took control of Crimea.

Ukraine's leaders vowed Sunday not to give up "a single centimeter" of territory to Russia as thousands rallied at rival pro- and anti-Moscow demonstrations, and tensions remained high over the deepening crisis in Crimea.

Interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk led commemorations in the capital, Kyiv, for the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ukraine's greatest poet and national hero, Taras Shevchenko.

He told a crowd that the country's "fathers and grandfathers have spilled their blood for this land. And we won't budge a single centimeter."

x

People shout slogans as they stand next to a statue of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, during a rally against the breakup of the country in Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine, Sunday, March 9, 2014.

Meanwhile, rallies honoring Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko were held in Crimea's key cities of Simferopol and Sevastopol, the eastern city of Donetsk and other areas. The rallies were against the breakup of Ukraine. Pro-Russia protesters held counter-demonstrations in cities throughout Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Scattered clashes were reported between the two sides.

Meanwhile, Russian forces tightened their grip on Crimea despite a U.S. warning to Moscow that annexing the region would close the door to diplomacy.

Russia moves against border post

In the latest armed action Sunday, Russians took over a Ukrainian border post on the western edge of Crimea, trapping about 30 personnel inside.

A Ukrainian military spokesman (Oleh Slobodyan) said Russian forces now control 11 border guard posts across Crimea.

Russia denies it has troops on the peninsula beyond those regularly stationed with its Sevastopol-based Black Sea fleet. Ukraine's much smaller navy is also based in the Crimean port city.

Witnesses say although the soldiers have no insignia identifying them, they are clearly Russian.

Foreign observers have failed to get into Crimea to get a first-hand look at the situation and were forced to turn back Saturday after pro-Kremlin gunmen fired warning shots.

Unease in Crimea continues after Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, signed a decree Friday canceling a March 16 referendum on Crimea joining Russia. Local authorities in Crimea say the ballot will go forward.

Russian lawmakers have vowed to support Crimea's decision if the Ukrainian region decides to join Russia.

Russia should join NATO: the benefits for the Global Security are enormous

To reformulate Lord Ismay's phrase: 1) Take Russia in, 2) Continue keeping Germany down, 3) Assert and exercise the US leadership position within the NATO as a unifying and directing force and vector.

"Ловец Человеков"

Connected? The halo is there. And the Book is there. And the disciples are there. But where is the Light of Understanding, in this big curved dark tunnel of a vision? Where is the big red dot? Where is the new beginning?

Russia and US Presidential Elections of 2016 - Google News

Russia international behavior - Google News

RUSSIA and THE WEST

russia ukraine - Google News

West, Russia, Putin

US - Russia relations - Google News

Hillary Clinton and rock group Pussy Riot

"Great to meet the strong & brave young women from #PussyRiot, who refuse to let their voices be silenced in #Russia. 1:09 PM - 4 Apr 2014" - Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton tweeted a picture Friday of her posing with members of the anti-Vladimir Putin punk rock group Pussy Riot. Clinton met with the women during the "Women in the World Summit" in New York. The group has emerged as chief opponents of Putin, and three members were jailed in 2012 after an anti-Putin performance at a church. The tweet has been re-tweeted almost 10,000 times.